17oct05

Saddam trial to test the evolution of international justice for ex-dictators.

With just two weeks before the trial's start, one of Saddam Hussein's
defense
lawyers waited in his London office for a courier to bring formal notice
of the
charges against his client. It didn't arrive.

"This is a joke," said Abdel-Haq Alani. "How can we prepare a defense in a
few days?"

The Iraqi Special Tribunal that will try Saddam beginning Wednesday is a
work
in progress as Iraq tries to build a democratic tradition while seeking to
adhere to international norms of justice in dealing with allegations of war
crimes and crimes against humanity.

There will be some differences from recent international tribunals that have
handled such cases, the most significant being that Saddam faces the death
penalty as a possible punishment. Also, he is being tried by his own
countrymen.

He is being taken before a formal court, however. Romania's communist
dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, was executed by firing squad alongside his wife
following a summary military court hearing in a 1989 uprising, while Italian
dictator Benito Mussolini was lynched with his mistress by communist
partisans
in 1945.

Human rights advocates hope the course of justice for Saddam will generally
follow the model of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, who was flown
to a
U.N. war crimes court in the Netherlands in June 2001 to face charges of
genocide and crimes against humanity in the Balkans.

The Milosevic trial has proceeded for more than three years with meticulous
care to ensure the appearance of fairness, although critics say the
judges have
gone overboard in making that point.

They also complain that the court's allowing Milosevic to defend himself has
given him a podium to promote his political agenda back home in Serbia
rather
than contest the 66 charges against him.

Michael Scharf, a former State Department attorney who helped train Iraqi
judges for Saddam's trial, said the Iraqi Special Tribunal's statute
safeguards
Saddam's rights and is founded in international law.

He argues that letting Saddam take the stage like Milosevic would be a
mistake.

"It is not an international right to be able to defend yourself. Milosevic
was erroneously given that opportunity and ended up resurrecting his
reputation
back home, restoring his legacy and making him look like a martyr," said
Scharf,
director of the Frederick K. Cox International Law Center at Case Western
Reserve University in Cleveland.

Saddam's defense will look very similar to that of Milosevic, Scharf
predicted, with his lawyers trying to turn the tables and incriminate
the former
dictator's Western enemies.

Alani, Saddam's London-based attorney, expects the court to appoint a lawyer
to defend Saddam rather than allow him to conduct his own defense.

"At the end of the day it is little more than a political farce and has
nothing to do with law. This is Saddam in a lynch court, being tried by
enemies,
" Alani told The Associated Press.

Richard Dicker, director of the International Justice Program at New
York-based Human Rights Watch, said the Iraqi tribunal risks
jeopardizing its
legitimacy if basic rights are not afforded Saddam.

"We have real concerns about shortcomings in the law and procedures of the
tribunal that raise questions about the fairness of the trial," Dicker
said in a
telephone interview from New York.

Saddam's trial, he said, is a further development in the emergence of an
international system of justice that began with the trials of German and
Japanese leaders after World War II and continued with the creation of
special
courts to judge war crimes in Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the 1990s.

But the Saddam trial diverges from the rules of those courts, Dicker
said. It
lowers the bar for reaching a conviction so that "beyond a reasonable
doubt" is
no longer required. And the prosecution didn't give Saddam's lawyers
adequate
time to prepare, disclosing their evidence less than a month before the
trial's
start, he said.

"For justice to be done, the trial has got to be fair," Dicker said. "If it
is not fair it will simply be a political show trial."

This document has been published on 26Nov05 by the Equipo Nizkor and Derechos Human Rights. In accordance with
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